Sharing city's pain: It's premature to rule out commuter tax before any plan is even on the table

Sen. Jeff Piccola, shown above, and Rep. Ron Marsico need to give the city every option to right its finances, and should not take a commuter tax off the table.

While Harrisburg’s financial crisis is of its own doing, the significant ramifications of the city not being able to pay its debt and bills affect all of Dauphin County directly, our region, and to a certain extent the entire state.

A workable plan to walk Harrisburg out from under this incredible and seemingly intractable mess is thus vital to everyone.

Last month, Mayor Linda Thompson at long last applied for distressed-city status under the state law known as Act 47. If approved, the state would pay for an expert to work with city officials to devise a long-term recovery plan. One of the Act 47 tools is a limited ability to impose higher wage taxes on city residents and nonresident workers as long as the court approves it, and the amount on commuters who work in the city is not higher than that paid by residents.

Sen. Jeff Piccola, R-Dauphin County, and Rep. Ron Marsico, R-Lower Paxton Twp., have introduced legislation to take that option away.

It is hard not to be sympathetic to the notion as Piccola stated, nonresident workers shouldn’t have to pay extra for a series of bad decisions they couldn’t stop by political leaders they never elected. But there is more to it than that.

The thousands of nonresidents who commute to Harrisburg each day already pay a tax of $52 a year. In return, the city provides police protection, fire protection, snow plowing and other services to the nonresidents who work in the city.

In a city where almost 49 percent of all real estate is exempt from property taxes, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to ask commuters to pay a modest amount — say $8 more — as part of a comprehensive plan where city residents, the unions, bondholders and other public and private stakeholders are sacrificing.

We believe it is wrong, especially when a plan is still being formulated, to take away one of the tools that might be of value in finding a way through this mess. While the city can’t expect suburban commuters to solve its financial problems, it’s reasonable to expect they would be a small part in the solution.

While some will be quick to say this is easy for The Patriot-News Editorial Board to advocate because it no longer commutes into Harrisburg, the truth is that we paid the $52 until recently, and we would not fight a small increase if it was part of a larger plan to actually solve the city’s problems once and for all.

What makes this all so frustrating is that Mayor Thompson and City Council members have put their own agendas ahead of the needs of the city for months. Where the city and the region have needed real leadership and inclusion all we have gotten is finger-pointing and inaction.

There has been almost no real leadership from the mayor’s office since she took office. City Council as a body hasn’t been much better until its recent retention of a top-notch legal counsel. It is no wonder everyone is wary of what might happen.

It has been and is incumbent on city officials to develop a comprehensive plan — including seriously looking at bankruptcy — that has all stakeholders sharing the pain and benefits of a solution. If they can’t or won’t, then the mayor and members of City Council shouldn’t cry foul when individuals and institutions take steps to protect themselves.

While we think the legislation proposed by Piccola and Marsico is wrong, we understand the sentiment given how city officials have acted so far.